BABBITT — What the Babbitt City Council had scheduled as a closed executive session last Tuesday turned into something more unscripted: a public accounting, by the city’s clerk-treasurer, of eight months of social media accusations, whisper campaigns, and doubt about her integrity.
Nancy Sanford invoked her right under Minnesota statute to have her performance review conducted in the open, then stood before the council and a room of residents and read aloud a litany of Facebook posts she said had been circulating about her since she took the job.
“They filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, but they still had to pay back wages to their employees,” she read. “Facts and evidence show Nancy and her husband were involved in fraud, and now she’s in control of Babbitt money.”
She kept going. Post after post. Allegation after allegation.
“I could go on for hours,” she said.
Sanford, who moved to the area from Missouri to take the position, said the claims focus on a legal dispute involving a former business she and her husband operated. She said they spent years and approximately a million dollars fighting the case and were fully cleared.
The dispute stemmed from the 2016 collapse of Lakeville Motor Express, a Twin Cities trucking firm whose abrupt closure left 95 union workers unpaid. State and federal investigators alleged that affiliated companies had been used to drain Lakeville’s assets before the closure. Finish Line Express, a last-mile carrier the Sanfords had co-founded earlier that year, was drawn into the investigation possibly because Mike Sanford was simultaneously serving as an executive at one of those affiliated companies. Investigators and the Teamsters alleged Finish Line was part of the same network, a claim the Sanfords denied. After an NLRB investigation, the Teamsters withdrew their charges against Finish Line without any adverse findings. The bankruptcy trustee separately determined the company had no meritorious claims against it and did not name Finish Line in related proceedings. A state settlement that resolved the broader case imposed no penalty or payment obligation on Finish Line.
“I have never stolen a dime, and I have never committed an unethical financial transaction,” Sanford told the council, her voice strained. “We were cleared. One hundred percent.”
She distributed documents to council members and offered copies to anyone in the room who wanted them, including a letter from the law firm that represented Finish Line Express summarizing the outcome of the various proceedings and a November 2016 letter from the NLRB confirming the withdrawal of the Teamsters’ charges.
Sanford said she came to Babbitt believing she could make a difference, that her more than four decades of experience in accounting, payroll, finance and municipal administration made her the right fit. She said she works an average of 67 hours a week without overtime pay. When calculated by the hour, she said, her compensation is less than the city’s lowest-paid hourly employee.
“This job is killing me personally,” she said. “Because I’m trying to do a really, really good job. And I’m getting attacked from every direction.”
She described becoming afraid to walk into the gas station. She said she had begged, from her 11th day on the job, for residents to come to City Hall with questions rather than speculate online. She said that request was misread as hostility toward the public.
“I should apologize for my tone,” she said of that early meeting. “My tone was probably too harsh. But I was sitting here, and I had already, in 11 days on this job, been accused of stealing money from this city.”
Council members responded with support. Mayor Andrea Zupancich said she had received comments from residents in other communities about the tone of discourse in Babbitt. Councilor John Fitzpatrick said he had been counting the participants behind the most inflammatory social media posts.
“You’ve got 80 comments made by 11 people,” he said. “That is not our community.”
He noted that the city had conducted what he described as an unusually thorough hiring process for the clerk-treasurer position, interviewing finalists multiple times and reviewing other cities’ hiring procedures before designing their own. Sanford, he said, rose to the top of a strong candidate pool.
“This woman rose to the top, not just for one of us or two of us,” he said. “There was not much of an argument.”
Councilor Jim Lassi, who said he had served on the council for 27 years, called the current climate the most challenging he had seen. He said he had recently been the subject of a fabricated story posted to a community Facebook group.
“I had not talked to her mom about an issue,” he said. “But she made it up and put it on What’s Up, Babbitt.”
Following Sanford’s remarks, the council voted to enter closed session for the remainder of the performance review discussion.